Introducing Cool Ghosts, Episode 1

Quinns: Instead of this week’s Games News we’ve got something substantially more awesome to put in front of you guys. Remember the old episodic format that SU&SD used to have? Long, TV-style videos that were a mix of skits, reviews and plotting?

Well, today Matt and I have returned to that format on Cool Ghosts, our videogame site. If you like games, jokes or weirdness then you should absolutely make it part of your day. The first people to watch it are already describing it as “Early Shut Up & Sit Down, but instead of the excitement of board games it’s the romance of videogames”.

Sure, romance. Plus a slightly higher budget, and just a touch of anger.

Joining me today to discuss this new direction is Matthew Lees. Hi Matt.

Matt: Great to be here, Quinns. I’ve been a fan of Shut Up & Sit Down for years, it’s a pleasure to be featured.

Over the past few years we’ve found our relationship with videogames to be unusual and turbulent. This is a big part of why our main love and focus has shifted heavily towards board games – the website you’re currently reading is our real home. But we’ve still got a bundle of strange, passionate, conflicted feelings towards the digital medium and the culture that surrounds it – and we suspect that if you’re reading this, you might too. Alternatively you just like weird, dark humour. Either way, this should be a treat.

Quinns: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Board games have always been a warm, surprising, friendly world where we’ve felt that we’ve been able to make a difference, but while I’ve been working in videogames since I was 15 years old my feelings towards them have always been complicated. There are the thousands of hours I’ve poured into videogames where walking away from them has felt like a bad breakup. There are the glowing reviews I wrote of games that sold poorly, and the studio never took a risk like that again. And of course, in recent years a not-insignificant fraction of videogamers has revealed itself to be reprehensible, brigading women and minorities who are working to make the space more inclusive, or who simply have the temerity to want in on this boy’s club.

But there’s no denying that we love videogames, either, with all of their hallucinatory grandeur. The biggest releases are like digital cathedrals, and the wittiest independent games are acupuncture for the soul. So we do have to talk about them, and this new format is our best answer yet. Something that’s as weird and dark as the videogame landscape itself.

Did I just repeat what you said with more words? I think I did. OK, turns out I literally couldn’t have said it better myself.

Also, I should tip my hat to Matt here to say that the editing and videography is just staggering. Holy crap has Matt come a long way in the last six years. It’s shocking.

Matt: It’s been a labour of love, and we both hope you love it as much as we do. AND NOW I MUST RETURN TO THE TASK OF REVIEWING GLOOMHAVEN. FAREWELL, MORTALS.